Article

2009-04-21 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

Universities 'Irrelevant' By 2020

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Posted by Anonymoose 2009-04-21 09:25|| || Front Page|| [9 views ] Top

#1 "tethered, isolated, generic, and closed,"

Just not for journalist anymore!

Posted by Procopius2k 2009-04-21 10:07|| 2009-04-21 10:07|| Front Page Top

#2 What are all the overpaid administrators to do withought all of that overpriced tuition money?

Posted by newc">newc 2009-04-21 10:09|| 2009-04-21 10:09|| Front Page Top

#3 Complete degree coursework (academic and trades) should also be broadcast on every cable and satellite system and available for download. Update the correspondence school model. It's one gov expenditure I would support. Watch it, Tivo it, study it. Expand the skills base and keep the young busy and out of trouble.

Posted by ed 2009-04-21 10:13|| 2009-04-21 10:13|| Front Page Top

#4 Hell, I've just been wondering who could afford college in 2020. The Tsar knows a couple of the younger engineers at his old company who owe more in student loans than we do on the house we bought.

If this "new model" brings down the price of an edumacayshun, that would be an even bigger plus than just the convenience factor alone.

Posted by Cornsilk Blondie 2009-04-21 10:21|| 2009-04-21 10:21|| Front Page Top

#5 IDK about you, but by the time Jack and Jill are eighteen, I'd like them to head out to a college and not be under my roof on the internet. Trailer cooperatives for internet undergrads?

Posted by GirlThursday 2009-04-21 10:49|| 2009-04-21 10:49|| Front Page Top

#6 There are several ways to significantly reduce the cost of a universary degree, even before filling out the applications. AP courses in high school translate to college credit -- or taking higher level courses to meet the requirement instead of 100-level courses -- if the student tests well enough on the national exams offered at the the beginning of May. Almost all of the trailing daughters' equally ambitious classmates are graduating high school with 6-8 AP credits under their belts, where each credit equals a full year college course, ie they're starting with up to two full years of college schooling done. While many schools offer some AP courses, one can study for any course independently; just make sure to arrange for a proctored exam with your guidance department at the beginning of the school year. Many states also offer dual credit for college courses taken while still in high school; trailing daughter #2 is currently taking first year Japanese that way, and next year will take most of her courses at the university with the adults rather than at high school... and the great state of Ohio is paying for it, so long as she earns good grades from the university. Finally, some tertiary schools offer the opportunity to test out of courses, either for credit or to be able to skip ahead to higher level courses in the subject. Contact the college/university admissions department to find out who to talk to about that. So there can be a payoff for independent learning, even if the work doesn't show up on the student's high school transcript, and discussion of the whys and wherefores of that independent study can make for very interesting college application essays.

Check out the following links (mom probably can suggest more, as no doubt can Rantburg's professors):

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html (note, AP study guides and practice tests can be purchased at the usual bookstores, as well as found on-line)
http://oyc.yale.edu/
http://www.apple.com/education/mobile-learning/
http://www.oercommons.org/
http://cnx.org/
http://www.bu.edu/today/buniverse/index.shtml
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

There is absolutely no reason that your student need start at the very beginning then work, antlike, along the normal path to the end, four years and $100,000 later.

Posted by trailing wife ">trailing wife 2009-04-21 11:24|| 2009-04-21 11:24|| Front Page Top

#7 IMHO, it can't happen soon enough. Most universities are a scam these days. Their product is over-priced, under-delivers, and they provide a haven for idiot leftists. Most people don't need a college degree anyway. A couple of years of business school or technical training would suffice.

Posted by Spot">Spot 2009-04-21 12:06|| 2009-04-21 12:06|| Front Page Top

#8 Spot,

I'm employing people and we find we need to train them after uni.

I think the worst thing you can do for your career is go to uni (if you've got the option of working instead and the right attitude.)

Posted by Bright Pebbles the flatulent 2009-04-21 12:44|| 2009-04-21 12:44|| Front Page Top

#9 Universities have been fairly successful in retarding the learning without walls movement, but their destruction is ultimately unavoidable. Information about everything is now available everywhere. Well, almost, and it is expanding at a huge rate. Ivy walls are becoming as relevant as telegraph poles in the 19th century were and professors are the telegraph operators of the 21st century. I hope to see India providing quality education there and on line in English that is cheap, cheap, cheap and of competitative quality.

Posted by Richard of Oregon 2009-04-21 13:02|| 2009-04-21 13:02|| Front Page Top

#10 The cheap netbooks are being promoted to kids through Toys-R-Us for educational purposes, giving access to many that couldn't afford a computer. They also make affordable internet education for those living in impoverished nations possible. Free university could revolutionize the world by simply educating them all for $300, saving the taxpayers billions in salaries alone.

Posted by Thealing Borgia 122 2009-04-21 13:11|| 2009-04-21 13:11|| Front Page Top

#11 Institutions that don't adapt, he says, risk losing students to institutions that do.

Then again, maybe the Affirmative Action Industry would lose half of their clients.

Posted by DepotGuy 2009-04-21 13:22|| 2009-04-21 13:22|| Front Page Top

#12 Universities do have a place in the education spectrum. The problem of the autodidact is that he tends to have deep understanding of the several subjects that interest him, but often very little of the remainder that do not. And while it is useful to the economy to have businesspeople, engineers, and technicians of all sorts who deeply understand their trades, it is necessary in a democracy that citizens have a broader understanding of history, law, and the key differences between Western civilization and all the others. Universities' general education requirements, while in need of a great deal of improvement at the moment, were originally intended to provide what was once referred to as a "gentlemen's education" which would enable said gentleman to judge when the specialists were piling it high and deep.

The irrelevancy claim is not new. For the most part a disciplined autodidact could get as good an education from the Encyclopedia Brittanica by the middle of the last century as can still be gotten from most universities. It's just that with the internet, one needn't stop by the public library every evening after work.

We can hope that the result of AP and dual credit programs at the high school level, and the available resources for the higher education crowd will drive the universities to resharpen their focus on broad education and important research, rather than continuing to pursue the nonsense that's enthralled them since the 1960s.

Posted by trailing wife ">trailing wife 2009-04-21 13:56|| 2009-04-21 13:56|| Front Page Top

#13 Welcome to the 21st Century. Think Tanks or interest groups will take the place of universities. We see it already on the net and it will just get more organized as time goes on. Those who are interested in a topic gravitate to it and they are often far more educated in the details than someone who has a general degree. Not to say that certification or degrees will go away, but just like journalism, you will need to produce a good product rather than a degree to have the people who are "into" a topic or who want a true expert to do the job.

Posted by Gluting Fillmore6653 2009-04-21 16:00|| 2009-04-21 16:00|| Front Page Top

#14 Fantasitc post Trailing Wife!

That may help alot of people. And a good Mother you must be.

In the end, the system was origionally introduced as a trade school to help you sharpen your skills in your chosen trade. Thus, what is old is new again.

Posted by newc">newc 2009-04-21 17:25|| 2009-04-21 17:25|| Front Page Top

#15 Thank you, newc. It's hard to say whether or not I'm actually good at mothering -- I was given such good material to work with: twice by nature (trailing daughters #1 & 2), twice by the families that bore and reared them for the first 16 years of their lives (formerly temporary daughter & part time daughter). Beautiful, gifted, hard-working, kind-hearted... it's hard to go wrong when presented with that. :-D

Posted by trailing wife ">trailing wife 2009-04-21 19:48|| 2009-04-21 19:48|| Front Page Top

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